Mamutik

The team schedule is packed. Days start at 7:30 for breakfast and ever minute is spent together, working, until 10:30PM. This started taking its toll. The group we have is extremely motivated and enthusiastic but yesterday you could tell that the energy level was dropping. And it was transferring to the high school kids. Arthur and I had suggested, in our nightly debrief, that they start off the next day with a fun group exercise to get the blood going, an maybe have one again at lunch. Kai is a second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and the PLs came up with the idea of teaching us how to do a roundhouse kick. We started with some stretches and jumped around a little bit to warm up and then we were taught the maneuver. I, in all my Charlie Chaplain grace, fell right on my ass. Yes it was funny, yes it hurt. Anyway, the activity was a success and the energy was way up, carrying through to the evening. The sessions created by the college students were excellent, they were really reaching the high school students. Feeling proud of our boys doing such a great job of taking the temperature of the group energy level and acting appropriately, we realized they were at a place where they were handling things on their own, and didn’t really need us hovering around whispering in their ear.

We deserved a little vacation so we took the afternoon off to go to snorkeling in one of the picturesque islands of the Tunku Abdul Rahman Marine Park. Mamutik is the smallest, slightly larger than a football field, of the five islands of the park and much less frequented and less commercialized. The snorkeling was AMAZING. First it was pretty damn cool to see the corals and the variety of bright, colorful, and plentiful fish.  The coral was mostly bleached out but there were some new growth that was bright and exciting. Until we found the other part of the beach which was a snorkeling wonderland. Here the coral was bright and alive and full of variety. The fish were everywhere and so curious, they swim right up to you. And just beyond the bouys which demark the snorkel zone the scenery was stunning. There were all types of corals, some that looked like short grass flowing in the waves but were hard to the touch. There were Nemo fish, and my favorite was a fish that sported just about every color of the rainbow. There was also my arch nemesis, sea urchins in every color, some were really big, with one and a half foot long spikes. We kept feeling these all over body shocks and didn't think much of it until we realized that it was jelly fish season the little guys are so small and transparent that you couldn't see them but you could feel them. It all looked like something right out of a dive video.